STANNARD – A free community concert will be presented by Play Every Town on Sunday, Nov. 3, at 3 p.m. at the Sky Meadow Retreat.
The concert of No. 69 in the Play Every Town, the 252 Community Concerts for a Cooler Climate is performed by pianist David Feurzeig. The concert will also feature Erin Dempsey, soprano.
Each program is locally tailored. Stannard, the town where Bernie Sanders made his first home in Vermont, is named for a celebrated Union Army commander, the only town in Vermont with a Civil War-related name.
Feurzeig will be joined by Stannard’s Erin Dempsey for Stephen Foster’s war song “Bring My Brother Back to Me.” Dempsey will sing Schubert’s “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, and Feurzeig will play music from the year of the first recorded settlers (1802, Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata); from the year the area that became Stannard was separated from the town of Goshen (1854, Liszt’s Berceuse in D-flat); and from the year the town was named Stannard (1867, Edvard Grieg’s Lyric Pieces, book 1).
The program also includes music by Claude Debussy from the year the town church was built, and music by Scott Joplin from the year the Sky Meadow Retreat’s Poole piano was manufactured. Like every concert in the project, this one will include its own unique sonata by Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata no. 69 for this sixty-ninth concert in the project. Other solo pieces will round out the program.
In May 2022, Feurzei-embarked on Play Every Town: 252 free concerts in each of Vermont’s 252 towns to confront climate change through the power of community and music. With this project, he becomes the first musician to perform in every Vermont municipality. He is traveling in his solar-charged electric vehicle throughout the state, offering free concerts to bring attention to the interrelated issues of climate and community, and to call into question the normality of long-distance touring and travel, while bringing music to his audiences.
Feurzeig, a professor of music at UVM, specializes in genre-defying recitals that bring together music of a variety of musical styles, from ancient and classical to jazz, avant-garde, and popular traditions.
Admission is free, with voluntary donations going to the Civic Standard, an organization dedicated to building community through shared events in and around Hardwick, which has also been active in rapid response to recent flooding.
Sky Meadow Retreat is located at 63 Winchester Road, Greensboro Bend (town of Stannard).
